Paris Saint-Germain have agreed to pay Neymar’s €222m (£198m) release clause and his move will smash Paul Pogba’s record £89m move to Manchester United from last summer.

Arsenal broke their own club record this summer to sign Alexandre Lacazette in a £52m deal but Wenger says Neymar’s fee is beyond ‘rationality’.

Wenger admits Arsenal cannot compete with some of the prices in the window (Picture: Getty)

‘For me it is the consequence of the ownerships that has changed completely the whole landscape of football in the last 15 years. Once a country owns a club everything is possible,’ said Wenger.

‘It becomes very difficult to respect Financial Fair Play because you have different interest from a country to have such a big player to represent that country

‘I always did plead for football living within its own resources. We are not in a period anymore where you think “I invest that, I will get that back”. We are beyond that.

‘The number [fee] today involves passion, pride, public interest and you cannot rationalise that anymore. On the other hand inflation is increasing – we were at £100m last year and only one year later we are at the £200m line.

‘f you think Trevor Francis was the first guy for £1m [in 1979] and it looked unreasonable, it shows you how far football has come, beyond calculation and rationality.

‘We still live with rationality and we are not the only ones – 99% of clubs do that – but of course we cannot compete with that.’